


Outside the Safe Zone

by kelex



Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013)
Genre: M/M, Spacedogs Appreciation Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-24 11:40:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4918144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelex/pseuds/kelex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nigel doesn't come home after a job, and Adam is concerned.   This can't end well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outside the Safe Zone

**Author's Note:**

> Mother. Fucking. Spacedogs. I need this like I need a fucking hole in my fucking head. I just… *headdesk* First Spacedogs fic, so please feel free to let me know where I've messed things up! "mica stea" is little star, and I decided that's what Adam is. He's Nigel's little star.

Everything that Adam was doing was so unnatural that he was having trouble breathing. Except Nigel wasn't there to rub his back and help him count, which only makes it worse. But it's been three days since Nigel left; "Just a fucking asshole I have to deal with, gorgeous. I'll be back before you can even miss me."

Only he missed Nigel as soon as he'd left, and now he hasn't come back, and Adam's very afraid that if he doesn't do something, Nigel won't ever come back. And Adam just didn't think he could handle life without Nigel any more. Just thinking about it makes it hard to breathe again, and he's rocking back and forth while he's standing still. So instead, he thinks about constellations, naming the stars in a visual game of celestial connect the dots.

Soon enough, he's calmed again, and Adam fixed an image of Nigel in his mind so he isn't thinking about anything else and that's a blessing.

Even as he goes into the bedroom, he can hear Nigel's voice clearly in his head. "Don't fucking touch this," he'd said, showing Adam the gray lock box on the top of the closet shelf. "You understand me? Don't ever fucking touch this, don't fucking think about, just pretend like you don't even know it's fucking here." 

He can't stand the thought he's doing wrong, but the bigger wrong would be to not help Nigel. So he dragged a chair over to the closet, climbed up, and pulled down the heavy metal box. It doesn't take him long to figure out the combination (it's Adam's birthday), and when the lid opened, he looked at the contents without really comprehending at first. 

Money. Loads of money, different denominations in different types. American, money with Queen Elizabeth on it, a wad of rupees, and many other types he didn't recognize, but would certainly look up later. A handful of bags of white powders, and those he did know to stay far away from. 

And there were guns, two of them. Silver plated, with dark handles, and rectangular clips with shiny bullets. They were a matching pair, and Adam picked one of them up. It was cold and heavy in his hand, and he wanted to put it back and lock the box and go back into the kitchen. Instead, he did what he had seen Nigel do; he put it in the back of his pants, and shoved two of the rectangle clips into his pockets.

He got down from the chair, and put one of Nigel's bigger shirts on over his own. It felt like putting on armor, being surrounded by Nigel's scent, and it helped to hide the gun.

He didn't know where Nigel was, but it couldn't be that hard to find him. He'd overheard phone calls that Nigel had made, knew more than Nigel wanted him to know, but it wasn't like he could erase the knowledge out of his brain. 

He knew that Darko--and Adam hated Darko, Darko frightened him, and Nigel made certain that he was never around--had called Nigel last night, and they'd made some kind of deal for Nigel's services. So that would be the place to start, Darko's club. The thought of walking in there made him breathe faster, but the image of Nigel in his mind helped calm him down. "Count, count with me, just fucking count with me," Nigel would murmur, counting to four, to eight, to twelve, then starting over, all the while rubbing Adam's back in warm little circles until he was grounded again. 

It wasn't the same, but it worked well enough for Adam to rein in the fear; fear was the hardest thing for him to handle, because Nigel had made sure he didn't have to. He took comfort in his leaving routines; he checked for his cell phone--tucked in the pocket of Nigel's shirt. He checked for his keys--in his pocket under the clips. He closed the door and locked it, keys going back into his pocket, and he checked the knob twice. He touched his cell phone to make sure he hadn't forgotten it, then touched the gun in the back of his pants. 

\-----

He had been all but silent in the taxi, barely able to speak enough to give a clear destination to the driver. He hadn't bothered to engage the driver in conversation, and paid the fare plus a tip all without speaking. He was biting his lip as he looked at the bright interior of Darko's club, and all the women lined around the door with all the evil-looking men waiting to go in. 

There was no Nigel. 

"Raki!" 

Adam turned around, unsure who would be calling his name, and saw one of Darko's men. He thought the man's name was Rino, but didn't know for certain because the only time they'd met, Nigel had broken the man's nose for leering at Adam. His nose looked broken again, because there was blood everywhere, and Adam was aware that the man wasn't coming out of the shadows. So he drew just a little closer, but didn't say anything. His hands were fists in his pockets, clenched around the clips. 

"Christ, Nigel is going to have a fucking fit if he finds you out here, what the fuck are you doing here?" Rino couldn't believe the kid was out here on the street--Nigel had sent him specifically to the apartment to watch out for Adam, but by the time he'd gotten there, he was already gone. 

At the mention of Nigel's name, Adam dropped the clip back into his pocket and brought out the gun with shaking hands. "W-what have you d-done with him?" he demanded, fighting to draw the hammer back with a loud click.

"Put that piece away!" The 9mm was nearly as big as Adam was, and he wanted to yank it out of the kid's hand and shove it somewhere Nigel would never, ever see. "He sent me to look out for you!"

"You're l-lying. Nigel would never leave me." Adam was still shaking as he held the gun, and his finger was trembling on the trigger. He could not be certain of that; he couldn't be certain that he was lying or if he was telling the truth. Nigel could. Nigel could always tell. "I'll shoot you."

The flat, calmly terrified way that Adam said it was very convincing of the fact, bolstered by the shaking of his trigger finger. "Okay okay okay, just calm down." Either way, he was going to be dead. Rino had been giving explicit instructions to not tell Adam anything, not take Adam anywhere, to just cook the fucking macaroni and cheese and make sure nobody else came through the front door until Nigel got out. And then there was Adam who was threatening to put a shaky bullet in his chest. "Nigel's… hurt." That was a safe way to put it. "He can't come home right now, and I'm supposed to keep you there. He, uh, he told me to _just cook him the fucking macaroni and cheese and shut the fuck up_. And uh, that he's sorry he missed the, uh…." Rino snapped his fingers, trying to remember what the rambling asshole had told him. "Super thing."

"Super moon," Adam supplied before he could even help himself. "The elliptical orbit of the moon causes angular changes in the visual size of the moon. When it's at the perigee of its orbit during a full moon cycle, that is the supermoon."

"That's the thing." Rino looked relieved that Adam knew what he was talking about.

"If Nigel is hurt, then he needs help. Take me to him." The recitation of the supermoon facts had comforted him, the comfort of something familiar in this situation calmed him enough to stop the trembling in his hands. "Take me to Nigel, and I'm going to help him."

At that, Rino looked terrified. "Sorry, kid, but I'd rather take my chances getting shot than doing that, because he's threatened to kill me if I upset you." 

"Take me to Nigel," Adam repeated. He didn't know what to do or say about any of the other information that he'd just been given, and so he focused on what he could deal with. "Now. Please." He didn't lower the gun, but he did ease the hammer back to resting.

"Fuck."

\---

Adam had refused to give up his gun, but Rino had slowly convinced him to follow. He didn't let the other man get close, mostly because he didn't trust him and didn't want anyone but Nigel touching him right now. 

They left Darko's club, which also helped Adam's anxiety a bit, but more took its place as they drew deeper into the city. He wanted to help Nigel, to bring Nigel home, even if he was hurt and bleeding, and he didn't understand why Nigel wouldn't want to come back to him. 

Rino was worrying about the kid; he wasn't right in the head, but asking Nigel about it earned the questioner a punch to the face, a knife through the hand, or any number of other punitive "discouragements" he'd observed Nigel hand out. But he was completely silent, eyes on his feet as they swallowed up the pavement, but at least the gun was out of sight.

He realized, watching him pass under street lights, that the kid was wearing Nigel's clothes. Oh, that was going to go over great with the big man; he _despised_ people fucking with his wardrobe. 

When they got to where they were going, Rino was instantly on alert. When he'd left, there'd been a light in the window where Nigel had been lying. Now the light was off, and there was a crack in the window glass that hadn't been there before. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. "Yo, Raki man, any chance I could convince you to stay here?"

"No." Single syllable words were about all he was capable of right now.

Figured. Fucking figured. "At least take the fucking gun back out, and point it at anybody that isn't me or Nigel, can you do that?"

"Yes." Those were simple enough instructions, and Adam took the gun back out and held it out to Rino. "Is it ready to shoot?"

"Is--" No. No, it wasn't. The safety was on, and Rino shook his head. "No, the safety's on. That little switch there, yes. Push it up." 

Adam did that, and when he cocked the hammer again, there was less resistance. "Okay." 

He really didn't want Special Ed at his back, but there wasn't much choice. "Stay behind me, and duck if someone comes at you." Kid was small enough he could trip someone and buy himself a chance to shoot. Nigel was really, really going to kill him.

When he didn't get an answer, he physically turned his head enough to see Adam nodding, and counted to ten in his head. The door had been kicked in, and was hanging half off the hinges. Apparently that didn't bother Adam, and he wondered if he even realized what it meant. 

He didn't. Adam assumed the door was supposed to look like that; in his mind, this is what a "hideout" was supposed to look like, especially for someone who did the kind of things Nigel did. He stayed quiet, though, afraid he'd done something very wrong to make Nigel stay here instead of home. 

"Nige!" Rino was climbing the creaky steps as quietly as he could. "Nigel!"

"What the _fuck_ are you doing here? I told you to go the fuck to my place and keep a fucking eye on Adam!"

At least he was alive. Rino was briefly relieved. "Yeah, about that."

"What the fuck do you mean, about that?" Nigel stumbled into the doorway, and he looked worse than when Rino had left. There was more blood on his face and his hands, his shirt was completely red and sticking to the sucking knife wound in his side. There was a fresh cut over his eyes, and he could barely see through the blood. "What--are you a fucking idiot? Did you just decide to do the exact fucking opposite thing I told you to do?"

A hot clutch of fear hit Nigel's chest when he saw a messy nest of brown curls bobbing up the stairs behind Rino. His heart nearly stopped beating because Adam was here, he wasn't safe at home, he was here, at risk, because of a fucking idiot who couldn't be trusted to wipe his own fucking ass, much less follow simple fucking instructions. "That you, gorgeous?" He tried to keep his voice steady, calm, keep as much of the terror he was feeling out of it as he could. "Adam?"

"Nigel?" He stayed behind Rino, because he'd been told to. But he heard Nigel's voice, so that made him happy, and he wanted to run to his lover. "Are you all right? He said you were hurt."

"Did he now. Couldn't keep your fucking mouth shut, could you?" The click of a gun hammer made Adam wince, but he didn't say anything. 

"Hey, he's the one who pulled a goddamn gun on me! It's not like--"

"You let him out with a gun!?" Nigel should have been shouting; this quiet rage was dangerous. But it was for Adam's sake; too much trauma today already and anything else would've put him over the edge. "Rino, you stupid fuck. You and me, we're going to have to have a talk about this. A long fucking talk. Get the fuck out of here." He kept his voice low, level, and as non-threatening as he could. "Come here, darling. It's all right, I'm not angry at you." 

Those were the magic words, and Adam came out from behind Rino and ran to Nigel's side. He wrapped his arms around Nigel's waist and buried his face in Nigel's chest, not even caring about the blood or anything else.

Nigel wrapped both arms around Adam, sagging against the doorframe and holding him in close. "Want to tell me what you're doing here?" he asked softly, wanting to stroke Adam's hair but not wanting to get him bloody. "Rino, what the fuck are you still doing here?"

Mostly making sure Nigel didn't keel over. But the implied threat was enough to make him clear out, and he was giving some serious thought to leaving the country. He liked all his parts where they were.

"You didn't come home and I was scared for you. I wanted to find you. I got the box out of the closet, I'm sorry." A whispered litany into Nigel's shoulder. "Then I thought you were angry with me because you didn't want to come home, and when I got here and saw this place I thought it must have been really bad." 

Grunting softly, Nigel maneuvered Adam back into the stairwell, and eased himself down to sit on the top step with Adam in his lap. Given the two dead bodies in the room at the top of the stairs, there was no fucking way he was letting Adam in there. "Okay, hey, listen. If I were angry, I'd tell you. I promised that, remember?" He wanted to shake Adam, remind him of all the work they'd done on turning Nigel into something resembling a human fucking being. But now was not the time. "Am I a liar, Adam? Do you think I'm a fucking liar?"

"No, you're not." Adam was certain of that. Nigel never lied to him.

And didn't that make him feel even more like a piece of shit. He was a huge fucking liar--just not to Adam. He made a point of not lying to Adam. "Then you know I'm not angry because I didn't tell you I was angry." 

"I know, I just missed you so much, and I got afraid." Adam couldn't let go of Nigel even though he felt warmth seeping in between them.

"I know, I'm sorry. It's my fault." Because he should've assigned Rino to babysit from the fucking start, not two days later when the bleeding wouldn't stop. "You want to go home, _mica steặ_?" 

"Yes, please." Adam was in no way going to let Nigel go during transportation, though. 

"Then give me the gun, and we'll leave." Because, yeah. There was just no fucking way that he was going to let Adam take one more step with that goddamn thing shoved down the back of his pants. "I can protect you."

Adam doubted that, if Nigel were hurt, but he did as Nigel asked. He didn't like the gun, and it didn't bother him to surrender it, but, "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm sure." He let Adam stand up first, and then he stood up, bracing against the wall. It was going to be a long fucking walk down those stairs, but for Adam, he could do anything. He locked his legs as he started down with Adam tucked under his arm. "Rino better fucking be down there or I'm going to fucking kill him."

Adam had no response to that, and kept himself pressed to Nigel's side, helping as much as he could. Which wasn't that much, because Nigel was refusing to lean on him for help. It frustrated Adam, but he didn't know how to vocalize that frustration.

Luckily for Rino, he was waiting at the end of the alleyway with a stolen car. Nigel heaved himself into the backseat, and pulled Adam in behind him. A soft groan as he laid flat on the back seat, and he caught Rino's eyes in the mirror. "There's a mess left behind." 

"Oh, I know. What happened?"

A deliberate flick of his eyes down to Adam's hair, all that was visible against his chest, and he glared at the driver. "What the fuck do you think happened, genius?" How this man managed to breathe was a fucking miracle of God. 

Wrong question, and Rino winced. "Yeah. How many, I meant to ask."

"Two." 

No wonder Nigel looked like shit. "I'll bring some things by the flat for you."

"You do that." Nigel did not intend to say anything else until they were home, Adam was safe, and Nigel had had a shower.

\-----

"Nigel?" Adam shook his lover by the shoulder, trying to wake him up. "We're home."

Nigel hadn't even realized he'd fallen asleep, and didn't have the mind or time to hold back the gasp of pain. "Ah, fuck." Lying down and sleeping had made him stiff, and moving was painful. His hand went to his side, feeling a new trickle of blood from the knife wound. 

Adam was scrambling out of the car so Nigel could come out behind him, but the curse caught his attention. Not that it was out of the ordinary; in fact, it'd been out of the ordinary if he'd started saying please and thank you. It caught his attention because it meant Nigel was still hurting and still needed his help. 

Except he didn't know what to do, so he just stood there, watching helplessly as Nigel scooted out of the car like an old man, one hand pressed to his lower left side. 

Once he was out of the car and upright, Nigel leaned over the passenger side window to growl at Rino. "Get those fucking bodies out of there, and tell Darko I said to go fuck himself. If he comes within a foot of my door, I'm blowing his fucking head open. You got that message? You think you can deliver it? Get the fuck out of here." He pushed off the car and turned back to Adam, looking as normal as he could. "Upstairs, yeah? Help me out and start the shower running." Mostly he couldn't stand the blank helplessness on Adam's face; it was breaking his heart just looking at it.

"Okay." Adam was glad to have been given something to do, and he was finally helping. He patted down his pockets to find his keys, and unlocked the door. It was already unlocked, and he backed away from it, leaving the key in the lock. "Nigel? It's unlocked. And I locked it when I left, I know I locked it. I always check, it was locked."

"Get out of the way. Come back down here, and get behind me." Nigel was on instant alert, and suddenly nothing else mattered except keeping Adam safe. And tomorrow, they were going to find a new place to live where nobody knew where the fuck it was. He met Adam halfway down the stairs, and shoved him carefully behind him, so that his body shielded the young man completely. 

There were worse things to do than die for someone you loved. 

He leaned against the wall, balancing on his elbow as he pulled two guns out, both the one he was carrying and the one he'd taken from Adam. His was empty, so he put it back in his belt and checked the one Adam had. Full clip, and oh, _there_ was the rage. He'd been so infernally idiotic to leave a goddamn loaded gun in the house. 

The fury animated him past the pain, and he charged up the steps to shoulder the door open. 

Darko was sitting on the couch, leafing through a copy of _Ad Astra_ and drinking one of Nigel's beers. 

Nigel held out his arm, blocking Adam from coming around to see who was in their safe place, and kept him pressed against the wall. "You know, I think I might actually enjoy killing you," he growled, because nobody came into his house and disrupted things. Nobody. Not anymore. "I told you, the fucking open door has been closed."

Darko just tilted his head as he dropped the magazine. Nigel knew better than to expect him to be thrown by the sight of a gun pointed at him, even if it was a crazy son of a bitch behind the trigger. "I just came by to see if things were done." 

A click as the hammer drew back. "They're done. It's over."

Darko rose from the sofa and smoothed his shirt before buttoning his jacket. "No harm done, then." 

Nigel could feel Adam crowding in behind him, and the gun came up just enough to rest a millimeter from Darko's forehead. He pressed it forward, so the barrel touched flesh and pressed against bone. "Not yet. You don't ever come here again. You do, and you're dead." 

"So touchy." Darko reached up and brushed the gun away. "I thought you might be needing a few cleaning supplies, so I left you a package in the bedroom." 

Darko. Had been in the bedroom. His bedroom, _Adam's_ bedroom. 

The gun went off. Didn't even have to think about pulling the trigger. He did, however, lower it at the last minute, sending it through his shoulder instead of his head. "Get the fuck out of my house, and if you ever come into my place again, it goes in your head." He brought the gun back up and dug the barrel into the skin, so as to make his point. 

The gun going off made Adam jump, and he thumped his head against Nigel's back, fingers tugging at his shirt. "Please don't, please don't, please don't," he murmured, over and over again. 

As Darko limped out of the apartment, Nigel turned to face him, keeping Adam protected and invisible the whole time. Once he was past, Nigel brought his foot up, planted it squarely in Darko's ass, and kicked the wounded man down the stairs. Didn't even look to see where he landed, and brought his arms up around Adam. 

Didn't know how in the hell he was ever going to fix this. He'd never intended Adam to get this close to anything that he did in his real life, and the paralyzing fear that was clear on Adam's face was a knife to his gut. "Come on, steặ," he said softly. "I got you, yeah? Nothing's going to hurt you. It's okay now." 

It wasn't. But it would be. Didn't matter who he had to kill to make it so, it'd be okay again. New locks would be a start, a new place would be even better, but right now, Adam was covered in Nigel's blood. That was prophetic vision he never wanted to see again. He could wait. Adam was going into the bath first, and Nigel was going to scrub every inch of him clean. 

Nigel could never be clean enough for Adam. But he was fucking well going to try. Because honestly, the alternative was fucking unthinkable. 

End


End file.
